This is a five-year prospective randomized trial comparing two intervention conditions designed to facilitate substance abuse treatment entry and enhance retention in order to reduce the behaviors associated with HIV and HCV risk among injection drug users (IDUs) and to improve client overall functioning. The overall goal of this project is to compare strengths-based case-management (CM) to an enhanced version of CM that uses case managers to facilitate a therapeutic alliance (CM/FTA) among out-of-treatment IDUs in Denver.

Clients will receive counseling and/or referrals for help with nine life domains (life skills, finances, leisure activities, relationships, living arrangements, occupation/education, health, mental health, recovery from substances, legal assistance) for a period of five months after baseline.

Experimental: Facilitated Treatment Alliance

Behavioral: Case management plus facilitated treatment alliance

Clients will receive counseling and/or referrals for help with nine life domains (life skills, finances, leisure activities, relationships, living arrangements, occupation/education, health, mental health, recovery from substances, legal assistance) for a period of five months after baseline. They will also receive a facilitated treatment alliance, which consists of meetings with methadone counselors to aid in treatment entry.

Eligibility

Ages Eligible for Study:

18 Years and older

Genders Eligible for Study:

Both

Accepts Healthy Volunteers:

No

Criteria

Inclusion Criteria:

opiate injection at least 3 times a week during the last 6-months

18 years of age or older

no drug abuse treatment in the 30-days prior to the interview

not transient

no known reason (e.g. pending jail time) why they will not be available for follow-up interviews

not involved in Project Safe research activities in the previous 12 months

willing to meet with an Addiction Research and Treatment Services (methadone clinic) counselor

eligible to be treated at ARTS

Exclusion Criteria:

too intoxicated or impaired mentally to voluntarily consent to participate in the project and/or respond to the interview

Contacts and Locations

Choosing to participate in a study is an important personal decision. Talk with your doctor and family members or friends about deciding to join a study.
To learn more about this study, you or your doctor may contact the study research staff using the Contacts provided below.
For general information, see Learn About Clinical Studies.

Please refer to this study by its ClinicalTrials.gov identifier: NCT00786630